About TAP
Agency, Creativity, and Care
Therapeutic Art Play (TAP) is a transformative program blending visual arts, pedagogy, and art therapy. Founded in 2019, TAP creates an art-working space where agency and creativity flourish. Our principles and practices, were explored in award winning research in 2022, and have evolved into flexible frameworks that cater to participants in primary schools, OOSH programs, adult educational settings, and educational art therapy with private clients.
Creative spaces
for wellbeing and learning.
Informed by visual artworking,
art therapy practices, and education.
What is the TAP Program
The TAP program creates visual arts spaces to play, no matter how that play manifests.
All play is welcome.
TAP is an open-ended, self-directed, art play space allowing for multi disciplinary experiential learning.
Students, staff, teachers, and the facilitator make art together creating a space for communication, understanding, problem-solving, the development of skills for collaboration and reflection.
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The facilitator meets with children, teachers, and staff, taking cues from their interests, play, and programs.
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Mindfully sourced materials are brought into the space to create an invitation to play.
The infants/toddlers/children/adults touch, manoeuvre, and interact with the art materials. They drag their fingers through the sand, water, leaves, they squeeze and push the clay, making their marks and noticing their interactions with the world around them.
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As we art work together we create bonds and empathy, we solve problems, build resilience and process experiences.
Reflecting with each other and the facilitator develops critically reflective skills and all this is supported by the reflective reports made by the TAP facilitator and delivered on your unique web portal.
These reflective reports are fine tuned to your needs and can contain:
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· a naturalistic observation or ‘learning story’,
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· quotes or voices of the participants, (wordclouds or descriptions of communications).
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· links to the Learning outcomes, or the principals of the EYLF,
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· ideas for extension,
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· questions for critical reflection, and
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· photographs from the artworking experience.
